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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27234862">a ticking clock will remain ticking unless acted upon by an outside force</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/faedemon/pseuds/faedemon'>faedemon</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>faedemon's Ectober Week 2020 [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Danny Phantom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Bad Clockwork, Bad Ending, Ectober (Danny Phantom), Ectober Week 2020 (Danny Phantom), Episode: s02e08-09 The Ultimate Enemy, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, The Ghostly Wail is Danny's Dying Scream, Time Loop, dont get me wrong i love clockwork! i just love angst more, it's implied that he is causing what happens in this fic, to a degree anyway</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 09:00:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>453</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27234862</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/faedemon/pseuds/faedemon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He is running. He has never not been running.</i>
</p><p>A TUE bad end.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>faedemon's Ectober Week 2020 [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1985162</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>a ticking clock will remain ticking unless acted upon by an outside force</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fic was written for Ectober Week 2020 Day 3: <strong>Rewind</strong>/Cold Case. It can be found crossposted on FFN <a href="https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13730381/1/a-ticking-clock-will-tick-on-unless-acted-upon-by-an-outside-force">here</a>, and Tumblr <a href="https://moipale.tumblr.com/post/633169212722085888/a-ticking-clock-will-remain-ticking-unless-acted">here</a>.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Over and over and over again he trips. Over and over and over again the tanks explode.</p><p><i>Time out,</i> Danny hears, echoing. <i>Time in.</i> At first it had sounded like a prayer.</p><p>He knows intimately the feeling of the pavement under his feet. He’s wearing the same sneakers he got on the first day of eighth grade. They’ve served him well ’til now, but he’s noticed that the soles are wearing a little thin. They don’t have the same bounce of support that they used to. And the red of them is faded, and one of his laces is unthreading, however he’d managed that. Beneath his sneakers, the asphalt is hard and unyielding and littered with chips of gravel. Every step hurts, just a bit.</p><p>The Wail had been exhausting, utterly. All that keeps him moving in his pathetic little sprint is inertia—he is moving, he will keep moving. He has to keep moving. He does not have permission from himself to stop.</p><p>He feels the Wail in his bones, and it rings in his ears still. It was both a cry and a melody. It was a sound that came from a deep, intimate part of him, something that he had pulled out of a memory, one he might never have recalled on his own. There has only been one moment in his life where he screamed like the Wail screams.</p><p>His cheeks sting, scraped raw. He cannot see them yet, but he knows his whole body is bruised. Were he not running, he might run his tongue over his teeth, and find that one of them is chipped.</p><p>He is running. He has never not been running.</p><p>There are great chunks of asphalt that had been blasted out of the whole, and it is one of these that catches his ankle, and he sees it coming—of course he sees it coming—and he intends to pass over it, he <i>should</i> pass over it, he shouldn’t even have to jump—</p><p>He can’t lift his leg high enough. The Wail sucked too much out of him: a death cry begetting death, trying to drag him those last legs home. It will take weeks (would take weeks, if he reached them, if he turned back time) for his cheeks to stop looking ashen again.</p><p>He scrapes his elbows and his chin on impact, skidding forward a few inches. He opens his eyes just in time to watch it blow: a great inferno, a plume, and sometimes Danny convinces himself he sees a phoenix as it rises. Sometimes he convinces himself he can feel the bloody, charred chunks of them spatter his face.</p><p>Over and over and over again.</p><p>Time out,</p><p>time in.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>hiya! hope you enjoyed &lt;3 today's fic is a short one, but i'm honestly really proud of it, so if you liked it please leave a comment! they mean a lot to me</p><p>if you want to chat, you can find me on tumblr at my main blog <a href="https://faedemon.tumblr.com/">faedemon</a> or my sideblog <a href="https://moipale.tumblr.com/">moipale</a>!!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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